Xfce Forum

dfsmjfdls

Member

Registered: 2021-01-14

Posts: 2

XFCE 4.16 : Alt+Tab task switcher on multiple monitors.

Hi!

Using current Debian Testing, which recently updated XFCE to 4.16.0.

I have multiple displays. One of them is the primary one. I can not unset that, because I need certain programs to open their windows on this screen, which does work fine if the primary display is set, and does not, if not.
For a certain reason I can not always look onto the primary monitor when I switch tasks.
The Alt+Tab task switcher used to show the information on all of the screens on previous XFCE versions.
Now it shows it only on the primary screen. For my situation this breaks the functionality.

How can I make XFCE to display the task switcher on all screens concurrently again?

I found it neither in the "Window Manager", nor in the Tweaks settings, nor anywhere else I searched. Searching the web I only found that this behavior has been changed, but not how to undo it. Is there any entry in some config file or something like that?

Thanks!

Last edited by dfsmjfdls (2021-01-14 12:36:19)

alcornoqui

Member

Registered: 2014-07-28

Posts: 832

Re: XFCE 4.16 : Alt+Tab task switcher on multiple monitors.

Hello and welcome!

That's discussed here: https://forum.xfce.org/viewtopic.php?id=14599

I don't know if unsetting primary monitor will have unintended consequences, please report!

dfsmjfdls

Member

Registered: 2021-01-14

Posts: 2

Re: XFCE 4.16 : Alt+Tab task switcher on multiple monitors.

Thanks for the reply.

As I already wrote, un-setting the primary display is not an option here. This suggestion might work for some, but for others - like us - it does not.

In our case, we have three displays on one PC mounted on three locations around of a machine; you can not see them at once. The closed-source main control program has to open its dialog windows always on a specific one of the three locations. It does that on the one defined as primary display. But it is required to switch between the tasks from all of the three locations. It worked fine before in XFCE (which I prefer), but does not any more since 4.16.

In any case, I strongly think that there should always be an option for the user to undo severe changes like this one which potentially can break usability.